I retired in November of 2024 and only a few weeks in I was already panicking under the stress of wondering what I would do with my days. I had a million ideas, but no concrete plans. The drizzly skies of an Oregon fall were starting to creep in and I knew that if I didn’t soon find something out of the house (but indoor elsewhere), that I could easily be convinced to put it off until the spring, and curl up on the couch for the winter.
What luck that I had recently visited the Meot: Korean Art exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum where I encountered a beautiful piece of pottery – this Korean moon jar – a perfect porcelain vase the size of a large beach ball. Looking into the artist, Park Young-sook, I found that she wasn’t classically trained, and only started ceramics in her 30s, and yet here were her pieces – showed in museums, under glass, with guards no less. Perhaps fine pottery could be my thing? With practice? I certainly had time now. I could learn to throw pots, work my way up to porcelain and someday make my own moon jars? Maybe not the first year but maybe by the second? Or third? First, a class.
I found a beginning wheel class at Morning Ceramics Studio – in inner SE, not far from my house. Wheel 101. How hard could that be? We were given clay, a motorized wheel and an instructor who showed us how to ‘throw the clay’ down on the wheel, spin it with a nuanced pressure that would create a little pyramid whilst using our slip-wet thumbs to gently form a well that became a thin wall (while it’s all still spinning), pulling the clay outwards and upwards and then – voila! Pottery bowl! We were only going to be firing two of our best bowls, so we had to sacrifice anything more that that back to the used clay pile to become reborn as someone else’s treasure.
I couldn’t form one. Every time I came close, my bowl would start to wobble and then audibly lose its shape, sounding like a flat tire going down the street. thump. thump. By the time everyone was on their second or third bowl, I was realizing that I wouldn’t even get one wheel pot out of the class. The instructor encouraged me to try a coil pot – so no spinning wheel. Just wrapping a pot like a stacked garden hose. Easy!
I get my coiling going and maybe preoccupied with building up the sides I somehow made the bottom too small and it just keeps rolling over like an egg.
Having decided by now that pottery was not going to be something I excelled at or found enjoyment in, I slapped some eyes and a tail on my pot like I meant for it to be on it’s side, and made a little fish out of it. I call it a moon fish.